Where damage has occurred to an internal vessel of the human or animal body such as to a blood vessel either by disease or by trauma, it is possible to introduce to the blood vessel a stent graft by endoluminal techniques which will restore patency of the blood vessel across the damaged region. Often such damaged regions include branch vessels. To ensure the blood flow can go into the branch vessel, bifurcated or side branch stent grafts are used.
There can be a problem with such bifurcated or side branch stent grafts in that to provide a connection into a branch vessel from a stent graft through the bifurcation or side arm a connection arrangement is needed. There have previously been proposed socket type connections in which connection is achieved by overlap of an inner and outer tube, however, owing to movement of a stent graft due to migration or change in physiology such overlap connections can become dislodged.
A similar problem exists with side arm stent grafts in that once a side arm stent graft is deployed in place and a bridging stent graft or stent is be deployed to extend from the side arm into a branch vessel there can be a problem with successful retention of such a bridging stent into the side arm.
It is an object of this invention to provide solutions to these problems or to at least provide a practitioner with an alternative a branch connector system.
Throughout this specification the term distal when used with respect to a portion of the vasculature, a deployment device or a prosthesis is the end of the vasculature, deployment device or prosthesis further away in the direction of blood flow away from the heart and the term proximal means the portion of the vasculature, deployment device or end of the prosthesis nearer to the heart. When applied to other vessels similar terms such as caudal and cranial should be understood.